The Sacrifices of Good and Evil
by True Red25
Summary: The Earth's only super hero finds himself against an adversary of epic proportions. Through his father's philosophies on good vs. evil, Hero must find a way to bring down the ultimate terror, but at a heavy cost. PLEASE READ AND REVIEW!


Okay so this is a story I am submitting into a writing contest at my college. Please judge this story very critically and tell me what you think and how it could be better. The max word count allowed for submission is 3,000 words and this document is over that limit by over 400 so if you guys can let me know what I can take out, please tell me. Please read carefully and please review!!

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"Don't kid yourself, my son. There _is_ evil in the world. Evil is heavy. Evil is epic. Evil is passionate. And evil is powerful." Heh, Dad, you forgot to tell me how much it would hurt fighting this universal terror. I wish you had told me that part.

My father was a great scholar for his time. He lived to be a whopping eighty-seven years old. No matter how old time would age him, he will always look the same to me as he did when he began teaching me the difference between good and evil.

He was a short and stocky man. His hair was as white as snow with a bald head on top of him. When asked if he ever wanted a hairpiece for his head, he wondered why he felt anyone should hide who they were. He had deep brown eyes with light sags underneath them. Underneath his fat nose crept what a small child may mistake for a white hairy caterpillar he wore as a mustache. He always wore a white button down shirt with brown khaki pants and a light gray vest with a red tie in the middle.

My father was a college professor for forty-five years. Even after his retirement, he never stopped teaching the necessity for goodness in the world. He believed that was his life's goal. Education and inspiration were the keys to his success and he was right. There was no man I knew who was greater than he. No man could match his inspiration and sheer presence in the room.

I am different from my father. Where my father was a man of thought and discussion, I am a man of action. I let my performance in the world speak for me. I am a hero. I have been this world's hero for five years now. What my father has not taught me, I learned through my own experiences, letting the world shape me into the hero I have become like clay in a grand sculpture. The people I protect have honored to a point where I cannot walk down the street without having the "Average Joe" come up to me and thank me for all I have done. Though I will die someday, what I stand for, the image of who I am, all of my accomplishments will be embedded into their hearts and minds forever. I've been told that I will forever be literally frozen in time thanks to my countless acts of courage and heroism and will become a legend for the entire planet, for all cultures and all religions.

Of course, there cannot be good without evil. Evil, as I have found, exists in every person on the planet. Man is a living host for sin in a forever-changing world. While technology will change, humans will evolve, they will always and forever have the capacity for evil. Evil has taken hold of us with its icy fingers that can grip our lives, never letting us to completely escape it.

That is why the necessity for good is required. If evil is an eternal darkness, then good is the lighthouse lamp that pierces through the black. Evil will take many shapes but will always be of the same substance. Murder, robbery, rape, fear, and violence are just a few of the forms I've encountered through my life. Virtue, courage, justice, hope, and willpower have become my mental weapons against these forces. My body is my physical weapon, using it to literally fight off the horrors that stem from sin.

I did not ask to become a hero. It was thrust upon me by the world. A bizarre hand of fate pushed me towards my destiny. I had been in a severe car accident. My body was unable to fight the wounds properly, leading to myself being in a coma for forty days. I had so many strange dreams during those times. Dreams of epic heroes of the past came and went in my mind as if I were flipping the pages of a book. At the end of the dreams, after being led through the past of so many before me, I was left alone, surrounded by a vast and empty land where the ground and sky were completely white.

From behind, I felt someone shove me forward, pushing me towards my destiny. I awoke the second I stepped forward to catch myself from falling in the dream. When I opened my eyes, I saw I was is a hospital room with my father at my side, looking up at me in awe and tears welling in his eyes. I look down at my hands, unsure what was going on. As I look past my hands, I see that I am upright in the air, hovering over my bed by a foot. My white hospital gown hung down around my ankles. The open window let a slight breeze in, allowing the wind to cause the hospital gown to flutter in the wind.

My father could not have been more excited and proud of what was going to happen now. As the months went by, more and more strengths began to show themselves. Along with flight, I discovered the ability of enhanced vision. My vision made a fighter pilot's eyesight look like he was blind. Everything was so crisp and clear to me. After my vision increased, my physical strength and reaction time increased just as dramatically as my vision had. So had my durability and stamina. I found myself being the only one of my kind around. For a time, people thought I was a freak. Even some religions believed that me simply existing would bring about the end of the world. In hindsight, they may be right.

With a huge influence from my father, I began using my abilities for good. I became a beacon. I became a symbol of hope and resilience in a world of debauchery. My own will to stop such acts first inspired those I saved. Then my city got behind me, taking in a great deal of pride with their citizen who fought the good fight. A year later, my name was known around the world.

"Good cannot exist without evil. Otherwise, there would be no way to tell them apart." These words haunted my father. He knew that there would be a day when another like myself would come to fruition in the world. My father knew that he would be my enemy. Newton's Law would be a staple in my father's head when he would think about the man I have become; "To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

The… creature, I face now used to be a man like myself. But fate's hand had other plans for him. His new form was grotesque, undergoing a transformation both physically and mentally like Jekyll to Hyde. This thing's name used to be Walter Shepard, but now he calls himself Cycnus. Cycnus' body had grown to brutish proportions. His skin had turned egg yolk yellow and seemed more scaly than skin. At every joint on his appendages were dark black spines that shot off a few inches. The spines were sharp like needles, as I had come to find out firsthand. His eyes were freezing black, lacking any sort of white or other color the normal eye would contain. He lacked any hair on his body, looking like a naked rate as he stood panting and staring me down in the pile of rubble I lay. As he stepped towards me, I could feel the rumble of the ground shudder in fear at his strength. He stood at what from what I could tell at least seven feet tall. A simple black shroud was the only piece of clothing on his body, wrapped around his waist. "Hero…" He bellowed out towards me. It sounded as if Satan himself were speaking through Cycnus.

My head still was spinning from the blow he had dealt me. My body felt exhausted from the beating I have received. Wearing only what was left of a red pair of simple cloth pants and a thick blue elastic belt, I tried to stand and fight. Getting up alone was difficult. How could I _fight_ this thing?

We fought in the city, _my _city. And she had been as badly damaged as I had. The electricity was out, but what was left of the sun was illuminating the battlefield. As if to symbolize my own battle, the Sun was fighting off its own dark clouds in the sky to gain control over it. Beams of light shot down from the light source, lighting up random parts of the streets and buildings of my city. I look to my side to miraculously see an antiques shop window still intact even after all of the fighting. My reflection displayed a whole consort of wounds across my body. I look down at my hands and chest to see cuts and bruises across my entire body. There were over a dozen cuts on my torso. A few of my fingers bled at their tips and the palms of my hand were lined red from clenching my fists and throwing them out as punches. I could feel the tickle of blood drip from my nose and down my upper lip. Both corners of my mouth bled down the sides of my face and a large bruise had begun o bubble up over my left eye.

My city was in no better shape. The miracles of engineering could not have prepared for the buildings and skyscrapers for a battle like this. There were holes punched through many of the taller buildings that Cycnus and I had plowed through, trying our best to defeat the other. My city's streets were cracked and jagged from the shockwaves our hits released. Recently, one of her apartment buildings was bombarded a little too much from the fight, giving way under the stresses of combat. The concrete of the building that used to house so many now spilled out onto the streets like blood. Like myself, my city bleeds. I now lay atop one of the piles of concrete that fell from the collapsing building. I place my hands down and try to push myself up. I make it to my feet and then stand. My thighs shake from simply holding up my own weight. I sure am glad Dad isn't around to see his son receive such a beating.

"Now," Cycnus' deep and hollow voice speaks "Hero, you die." Death, heh, I knew I'd die someday, but not like this. As Cycnus approaches, he steps on several chunks of concrete, crushing them under his own weight.

"Why… why are you doing this?" I ask as I wipe the blood dripping from my mouth. I need a little time to recover. Hopefully talking will buy me the precious seconds.

"Hmph." He grunts. He cocks his neck to the left and then the right, cracking it loudly. His face snarls with each crack. "I had been cast out from your society simply because of the way I looked. People looked at me before and treated me like a deformed Spartan baby, left to die and fend for myself. _That_ is what this society has turned into." He points at me as if I were the cause of it all.

"So you took your anger out on _us_?" A surge of pain creeps up through my left leg. As hard as it was to ignore, I push the pain away.

"You people make the world the way you like it. You make it so it reflects your own lives, a beautiful city for beautiful people." He swipes his massive arms across an in front of him with rage. "Well now I'm making it the way _I_ like it." His voice is empty but it pierces my booms through the destruction and into my head. "Then I will reign over this mud ball of a planet. You are the only one left who can stop me, and you're clinging to what is left of your life." He holds his left hand out and clenches it shut. Veins bulge out from his scaly yellow skin. "It was your people's evil in their society that drove me this way. Your own darkness has come back, manifested itself into me, and propels me forward." He chuckles a little and looks me right in the eyes. "I am not a monster, Hero, I am a GOD of destruction, tyranny, and chaos!" His voice picks up in pace, excited by his demented ideals. "From this day forward, _I_ will rule this planet. And to show others what believing in a false Hero like yourself brings, I will show them that you failed and that they will too. Your skull will rest on my throne on the left armrest. Where every time I sit down, my left hand shall go across your pathetic cranium and I will give it a squeeze to ensure the image sinks in to all who reside in my court!"

I remember Dad said that evil had resided in all of us. But he also said that we always would have a choice to give in to it or to stand on the side of good. He said it would be easy to surrender us to temptation, but the more difficult thing was to resist it and stand against the evil. My eyes widen as I remember his words. I stop panting so hard and thinking down. This is all part of the job. I'm supposed t take a beating. I'm supposed to show that good can overcome evil. It is not easy, and it never will be, but that's why I'm here. I'm here to show other that it _is_ possible to defeat the insurmountable odds. I can do this. I have to do this. "I _will_ do this."

I can feel my what must be at least my fifth wind surging through my body. I tense up all of my muscles in my body and relax them. I take in a deep breath let it out easily. I place my left foot behind me and take a running stance. Cycnus looks at me, cocking his head to the side, unsure of what my next action would be. I push off of my leg, lunging towards Cycnus with my right fist pulled back. Cycnus' eyes widen in shock at my speed. All of my surroundings turn into a blur as I rush the manifested evil and slam my fist across his jaw. Cycnus falls over himself and rolls backwards several times before he picks himself up and glares back at me.

"One final round before you die?" He chuckles as he places his left hand on his jaw. "I recommend you begin your prayers." He moves his jaw left and right, readjusting it. He turns to the side, spitting out a glob of blood from his mouth. He didn't get all of it, as a droplet of blood was left on the corner of his lip.

"My father, this city, the entire planet, they're all depending on ME!" I shout to him as I hold my right fist out towards him. The other is locked at my side, also in the form of a fist ready to be thrown. "And I don't care if I DIE trying, mark my words, I'm not going to let them down!" I prepare my body for the attack that will finish this fight. Cycnus pounds his fists together and beckons me to come at him. That's _exactly_ what he'll get.

I land on the ground and press off of the destroyed pavement once more, cracking it beneath my foot from all the force I put into the leap. I rocket towards him, cutting through the air like a jet fighter. Cycnus holds his arms out, ready to catch me before I crash into him. Too bad for him, I wasn't thinking of plowing into him knocking him down. I fly underneath his outstretched arms and around, grabbing hold of his body from behind around the waist. I clench my arms together around his body and lift us upward to the sky.

"Hero, what are you doing?!" There's panic in his voice. He knows that this will end it, so he resists. He reaches around and tries to claw at my back, scraping it open and letting my blood fall to the earth. The pain in indescribable, but I keep increasing our altitude. "Let me GO!" He tries to free himself from my grip. He stabs his needle spines into my arms and hands. I want to scream, but the atmosphere is getting thin and I need the oxygen. "You'll kill _both_ of us!" He tells me.

"And what makes you think I have a problem with that?" I reverse my flight path, aiming the two of us directly for the ground. Cycnus screams at me, telling me I can't do this. He tells me repeatedly I can't. He begins making false promises I know he will not keep. A moment ago, he would have done anything and everything to destroy life on this planet. Now, seconds from death, he pleads with me for his own. He has already made his choices and these are the consequences, and they are my own as well.

My father told me that while a hero may be a torch in the darkness, like all flames, they eventually die out when there is no fuel left to burn. That is, unless the torch is passed onto to another. As Cycnus and I plummet towards the earth, breaking through the sound barrier and ever increasing our descent, I feel as though only my physical being is what will die. I understand now what the man meant when he told me I was frozen in time now. My _spirit_ will reside in the rest of humanity now, serving as the inspiration for others to follow and the aspiration for them to achieve.

The ground is now quickly approaching us. What were green, brown, and blue splotches of the earth now began to look more like the trees and buildings that resided in my city. We make it back down to our original battlefield, slamming into the ground with a tremendous force that rocked the entire city and its suburbs. Windowpanes shattered from the shockwave the collision had caused. We created our own crater inside the city that would eventually be a memorial. Through the smoke and dust, I struggled to my feat. I felt so weak. All I wanted to do was sleep. I walked out of the crater and out of the smoke, heading down the street. Cycnus did not follow. He could not, not anymore and never again.

I can see my fellow citizens in the distance. They were running towards me. I could see smiles on their faces. Many applauded as they ran towards me. But then I see their smiles invert. My legs give way underneath me, dropping me to my knees. I then fall to the ground, face first. I'm so tired; I just want to sleep for all eternity. For my hardships, it was the least I could receive, and I accepted it.

My Dad was right, of course. He dedicated his life to a better world and so did I. He sculpted me into the hero that I became and neither the world nor I can appreciate him enough. My name, Hero, went down in history that day. I started out the son of an everyman, only to grow up into _The_ Man, and I wouldn't have had it done any other way.


End file.
